Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists

by Edited by Adrian Collins

  Relief...toward me, the one who’d tortured him mercilessly for months on end. He doesn’t trust me—I doubt he’ll ever truly trust me—but he’s beginning to rely on me, which is just as good. He knows well the power embodied in me. He knows he can use it. Have I not offered it a thousand times and a thousand times more? He has but to say the word. It’s clear he hasn’t yet made up his mind about accepting my offer, but this is a delicious first step. Like a wedge being hammered into wood, I’m certain it won’t be long before his resolve cracks.

  Brama steps lightly toward the door. For all my smug pleasure, I grow worried as he reaches for the latch. I’m vulnerable, beholden to a mortal, a thing that infuriates me when I dwell on it overlong. It makes me wonder what I’ve done to displease my lord Goezhen, but I also know it could grow worse. Well worse. There’s no telling whose hands I might fall into were Brama to lose me or fall to an enemy’s blade. No telling what they might do if my presence within the gem is detected. In Brama, at least, I know the sort of man he is. Thus far, he’s taken the utmost care not to reveal my nature.

  When Brama opens the door, he finds not the assassin, but a towering man with one hunched shoulder and a deep, ragged scar running over his left eye.

  Brama’s voice is gravel and stones as he speaks the man’s name. “Kymbril.”

  One side of the scarred giant’s mouth crooks upward. “Didn’t know if you’d remember me, boy.”

  “I’m not a boy.” Brama looks him up and down. “And you’re a bit hard to forget.”

  Kymbril stares over Brama’s shoulder into the room. One of his eyes is colored shit brown, and the other, the one with the scar, is a grey-blue, like the overcast skies of desert winter. It’s what earned Kymbril his nickname, the Mismatched Man. “You going to invite me in?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Sleeping.”

  Kymbril grins his toothy grin; his mismatched eyes shine like the edge of a knife. “You’re a joker, you are. Be careful it doesn’t earn you a missing tooth or two. Wouldn’t want that pretty smile of yours ruined.” He bulls forward, daring Brama to stop him. Brama lets him pass, then closes the door behind him. Like a forge’s flame fanned by the bellows, I feel Brama’s worry being stoked by Kymbril’s presence. Surprisingly, though, it’s more about the girl than it is about himself. He knows as well as I do this visit has something to do with her. Sliding the sheath back over the kenshar’s blade, he lofts it toward the tabletop. It clatters across the wood and falls to the floor with a thud.

  Brama sits on the room’s lone chair, leaning into it as if he were some duty-ridden king preparing to suffer through the day’s final petition. Kymbril, meanwhile, takes in the room, examining the table, the pile of clothes in the corner, the space between the bed and the wall.

  “Get on with it,” Brama says.

  Kymbril continues his inspection as if Brama hadn’t spoken. When he seems satisfied, he sits on Brama’s bed as if the room were his, and rests elbows on knees, the way a dear friend might before imparting unfortunate news. “Already warned you once, boy. There’ll be no warning the third time.”

  Brama says nothing, but I can feel the desire in him for Kymbril to do something. Anything. The rage he has for me and the pain he’d endured when he’d been mine is now a deep well Brama draws on when it suits him. Such things would crush most men, but in Brama it has become the fuel he uses to make his own fire burn brighter. It’s saved him more than once, but it’s also landed him into trouble.

  “Yesterday,” Kymbril begins, “you were seen speaking with a man named Nehir.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Nehir.”

  “Thin. Handsome bloke, but has the look of the reek about him. I believe he was holding a crossbow on you?”

  “I don’t know anything about him.”

  Kymbril nods as if Brama is being perfectly reasonable. “Then why were you talking with him?”

  “A few men were following him. Didn’t like the look of them, so...we had words.”

  Kymbril smiles genuinely. “Had words... I like that.” The big man frowns, lost in thought. “You seen them around before? Nehir and his little sister, Jax?”

  Brama brightens upon learning her name. He savors it a moment. Jax. “Never saw Nehir before that day. Didn’t even know his name until you said it just now. But I’ve seen the girl here and there.”

  Kymbril waits for more, then frowns when Brama doesn’t continue. “That’s your story?”

  “That’s my story.”

  Kymbril nods. “Very well. Now I’m going to tell you a story, Brama. And when I’m done I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer it for me.” He pauses, licks his lips and stares at the ceiling, as if ordering the events in his mind. “A few months back our young man, Nehir, shows up in one of my parlors. Smokes a while. Some expensive tabbaq, I’m told. Then he gets raging drunk on our finest wine, which, I readily admit, is not all that fine to begin with. He starts telling everyone who’ll listen how he’s a lord of Malasan, how his holding had been stolen from him by a neighboring duke, how he’d been chased from his homeland here to Sharakhai. Vowed revenge, he did. On the lord who killed his family. On those who stood by and let it happen. Even swore he’d kill the king of Malasan himself if he wasn’t restored to his family seat. Everyone humors him because he’s buying araq, wine, whatever they want, but they’re all grinning behind their cups, and when he leaves, they’re laughing before the door even slams home.

  “A few days pass, and Nehir stumbles in through that same door, already two sheets gone, saying much the same thing. He buys more for the house, starts waxing on about knives in the night and revenge against the mountain lords of Malasan, but this time, a little girl shows up and leads him stumbling back into the streets. And here we come to the interesting part, Brama, so pay attention. Not a week passes before a man from Malasan darkens the doorway of that very same parlor. Thin man. Calm. As likely to knife you as smile. You know the type. He asks a few questions. Drops a coin or two in the process. He wants to know about Nehir—what he looks like, whether the parlor maid had seen him since, where he might be found now. This news drifts to me, as you might imagine. Didn’t think much of it at the time, but I had my best man, Maru, check into it.”

  Brama knew Maru. Everyone in the Shallows did. He was a pit fighter once, but he’d found the competition too equitable, so he left and joined Kymbril’s gang in search of friendlier sands over which to sail. He’d since built a reputation for being as vicious as he was skilled with a blade.

  “Maru found neither Nehir nor the girl, so I put it from my mind. Figured they’d moved on. But then, lo and behold, not two weeks later word comes that a few of my regular patrons aren’t looking for reek with the same sort of fervor they once had. Some stop buying altogether. Makes a man wonder, that does. Makes him worry. So I send Maru out sniffing, and what does he find? That someone’s been funneling Malasani black into the Shallows without my leave.”

  Brama’s curiosity is piqued, as is mine. Until this point he thought Kymbril had sent those men after Nehir. He thought he’d be dealing with a loss of one of Kymbril’s own men at Brama’s hands. But now it’s clear there’s a third player. He might just come out and ask it—Who was the man? You must know something!—but mortals have a curious way of filling silences and revealing more than they mean to, so Brama silently waits.

  “You can imagine”—Kymbril reaches down and scuffs bits of dirt off the tops of his worn leather boots—“the sort of black cloud hanging over me when I found out. You can imagine the sort of imaginative phrases that came out of my demure fucking mouth. I’ve been looking for Nehir ever since. I’m not too much of a man that I can’t admit I’ve been thwarted thus far. Maru’s normally quite good at rooting such men out, but Nehir’s a tricky one. Then I hear something strange. Do you know what it was, Brama?”

  Brama shakes his head.

&nbs
p; “I hear that some man riddled with enough scars to make a soldier blush gets into it with two men chasing Nehir and Jax like hounds on a brace of wounded hares. That true, Brama? You following those men?”

  “I was.”

  Kymbril nods, neither pleased nor displeased. “Thought so.” His brow creases as if he’s working out the final pieces of a puzzle but can’t quite get to them to fit. “You can imagine how a man in my position might wonder why you’d do such a thing. Why you’d protect them. Doesn’t seem to be a reason. Unless...” He purses his lips, the picture of a man lost in thought, then nods as if the last of the pieces have fallen into place and the painting is now clear. “Unless you have a vested interest. You know that term, Brama? A vested interest?”

  A manic gaze had replaced the look of sufferance in Kymbril’s ill-matched eyes, and the tightness in Brama is building. He’s ready for anything from Kymbril. As am I.

  “A vested interest means you protected him because he means something to you. Let’s say Nehir was your brother. You’d protect him then, wouldn’t you? Or if he was paying you. Then you’d certainly protect him. Tell me it isn’t so.”

  “I never met him before that day, Kymbril. I swear it.”

  The muscles along Kymbril’s shoulders bunch. “He swears it.” He stands and stabs a knotted branch of a finger at Brama’s chest. “When I was your age, I was already carving out my territory, right here in the Knot. I took it from a man who was as cruel a bastard as I’ve ever come across. But while I was coming into my prime, he was going rheumy with age. He was worried more about the tea that helped his gout than the men who ran his reek for him. Do my eyes look rheumy to you, Brama?” He cracks the knuckles on one hand loudly, then does the same to the other. “Do I look like I couldn’t take down a bone crusher with one fist?”

  “You are the envy of all who survey you. As fit a man as I’ve ever seen.”

  With blinding speed, Kymbril grabs Brama by the throat and drives him backward. The chair tips over and Brama falls to the floor. He doesn’t move a muscle to stop Kymbril, even though I offer him all the power he needs. I am more incensed at Kymbril’s actions than I ever thought I’d be. Coming here to Brama’s home and pretending he owns all he lays his eyes on...

  “Are you working for Nehir?” Kymbril asks, his breath heavy with lemon and garlic. “Be careful how you answer, now. Take your time. It could mean your life.”

  His hand is around Brama’s neck, squeezing hard enough to bruise, pinching Brama’s windpipe so tightly his breath comes in choking gasps. Brama shows no pain, though, nor does he flinch, not even when Kymbril lifts him by the neck and slams him down onto the warped floorboards.

  “I work for no one,” Brama replies.

  “Not even me?” A threat. An offer.

  “Especially not for you.”

  Kymbril laughs a deep rumble of a laugh. His eyes drift down to Brama’s neck, where the sapphire in its dirty leather wrapping has spilled from his shirt. “Man could stand to make a pretty pile of coin, he sold a thing like that.”

  “I could never sell this, Kymbril.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “After I fucked your mum every which way but sideways, she handed it to me with a smile so bright that tears came to my eyes. Told me never to part with it as she placed it in my hands.”

  Kymbril stares, eyes crazed, even a bit fearful, as if he can’t figure out why Brama isn’t more scared of him. But then his face softens and he laughs, a loud affair, the sort the drug lord is known for. “You’re a twisted little fuck, you are.” Then he shoves Brama away, stands, and walks out, chuckling, as if Brama hadn’t just denied him something he very much wanted.

  * * *

  A short while later, Brama stares into a brass mirror hung above the wash basin. His room is dark, but there’s a candle on the table below the mirror, lighting the carpet-weave pattern of his scars in a ghastly pallor. “Did you know he would come?”

  “I’m no god, Brama. I cannot see the future.”

  He chooses his next words with care. “I need to find the girl.”

  I stare back at him, calm for all the anticipation that’s boiling up inside me. Even though I’m bound, even though I’m imprisoned and beholden to Brama, the things Kymbril revealed have lit a fire in me. Kymbril is now a part of the light that surrounds the girl, Jax, as is her brother, Nehir, as is the assassin chasing them. I know it is so. I just don’t know how as yet, or why. But that is all part of the wonder of this gift given me by Goezhen. Like a flower unfolding, it changes every time but is no less beautiful for it.

  “Why would you care if she lives or dies?” I ask. “You’ve never even spoken to her.”

  He knows I can sense his thoughts and still he lies. “I don’t care for her.”

  “Do you not?”

  His face has begun to flush. “She’s being preyed upon by her brother and by the people of her homeland. Soon Kymbril will have her, and when he does, he won’t let her go until he’s wrung every last copper from her. And then he’ll give her back to the desert with a knife across the throat.”

  “And you won’t allow it?”

  “You know I won’t.” His words are a nod to how he was preyed upon by me. A bit of that dark time flits through our minds, and I feel his resolve harden, his anger toward me growing in the bargain. “Tell me how I can find her.”

  I reach out to him. “You know you have but to take my hand.”

  “No.” He recoils. “Lead me to her.”

  In the mirror, my expression saddens. “Alas, in my current state that is well beyond me. Had I true form, however...”

  Brama’s face pinches in anger. From a shelf beneath the basin he takes out a small lead box. “Wait,” I say, but Brama ignores me, placing the necklace inside it. “Wait! You may torture me if you wish, but it changes nothing!”

  The lid closes, and all goes black.

  I feel nothing. Not Brama. Not the tiny room he’s chosen to live in. Not the tannery nor the Shallows beyond. None of Sharakhai. None of the desert. Not even the heat, nor the sky, nor the endless sands. I know not how Brama found this secret, but it is my one true fear, my one true weakness, to be utterly parted from all I’ve come to love.

  I feel myself falling. Down a deep hole I drift, and the farther I plummet, the more I worry that I’ll never be able to return even if Brama were to open the box. It is one of the few ways we, the ehrekh, can die. Does Brama know this? I hope not. By the gods who walk the earth, I hope not. Far worse than the isolation is the sense of being undone, of leaving this place, never to return. I will never go to the farther fields as Brama will when he dies. Lacking the blood of the elder gods, I will live in this realm until my final hour, and then I will simply be gone, like smoke from a candle snuffed. It is a fear I have always harbored, but now it consumes me.

  Time passes—how much I cannot tell—but finally, blessedly, the lid of the box opens, and Brama takes me up once more.

  I stare at him in the mirror, my dark skin cast golden in the wavering brass. “I cannot find her! Not unless you will it!”

  “I do will it,” he says.

  “But you must accept what I give!”

  He lowers the sapphire. “Never.”

  “Then you will not find her and all that you’ve predicted will come to pass! Save her if you would, Brama Junayd’ava. You have but to take my hand.”

  For a moment, the gem remains, hovering above the leaden box. He is lost in the memories of our time together. Part of him wants to be done with me once and for all, but there is another part that wonders at the things he might do were he to accept the power I could give him.

  I whisper to him, “You could rule this city if you so wished.”

  A heartbeat passes. Then another. Slowly, Brama lifts the gem from the box and stares at my beaten reflection once more. “How?”

  “Welcome me,” I say to him. “Welcome me, and use the gifts I lay at
your very doorstep. You have but to say the word, and I will be returned to my prison. All is at your will. But make no mistake. Your very form and frame is necessary. You must open yourself to me.”

  He stares into my eyes, and I know he’s already decided. The dread from moments ago lingers, but for the first time since being trapped between the facets of this sapphire, I feel like I’ve taken a step closer to setting myself free—not because of Brama, but because of the girl. She is the key, though I cannot yet say how. The path the fates have laid for me is often clear only well after the lights have first been shown.

  “Very well,” Brama says, and indeed he welcomes me.

  I approach, and he blinks, once, twice. When he opens his eyes the third time, his view of the world has changed. He sees more. Motes of magic drifting on the subtle breezes within this dingy room in the slums of Sharakhai. He hears more. Echoes of life and death and anger and lust. The very breath of the first gods falls upon his skin, making it tingle here, then there, then deep inside him.

  He walks to the door. Opens it. Takes the stairs down and enters the street. So many scents are on the wind. The young. The old. Lovers. Sworn enemies.

  “What now?” Brama says to the first star in the sky.

  “You walk the city.”

  And so he does, the twinkling lights of fate brightening as he goes.

  * * *

  Near the edge of the Shallows sprawl five mountainous buildings, the constituent parts of an ancient tenement built hundreds of years ago as a barracks for a looming war with Qaimir. The buildings show their age: their amber stone crumbling, arched windows chipped away by more recent inhabitants, graffiti along the ground floor written in paint or blood or shit. The slumlord who owns them cares little about its outward appearance, nor does he care how poorly the interiors are treated; one need only enter any of the edifices to see the truth of that: refuse in the halls, holes in the walls between rooms, the unyielding smell of piss and unventilated cooking—humanity squeezed to the breaking point. No, the lord of this manor cares only that his rent collectors are able to sweep through with their enforcers and gather the handful of copper khet owed from each and every room at the beginning of each and every week.